The other day I visited Colt’s London HQ and saw how the telco is revamping its approach to developing more customer-centric and Agile solutions (Colt consciously avoids the “cloud” terminology). By now, most telcos managed to jump onto the cloud bandwagon by launching cloud-based services. The challenge, from an end user perspective, is that these solutions all seem very similar. Customers can get storage, server capacity, unified communications, etc., from most telcos. All telcos underline the value-added nature of end-to-end network QoS and security that they can ensure (check out our report, "Telcos As Cloud Rainmakers"). Indeed, telcos have some right to feel that they have achieved some progress regarding their cloud offerings — although it took Amazon to show them the opportunity.

But most telco cloud offerings suffer from the fact that telcos develop cloud solutions in the traditional sense through their traditional product factories. This approach tends to follow rather than slow product innovation cycles. Moreover, it produces products that, once developed, are pushed to the customer as a standard offering. All customisation costs extra.

The reality of cloud demand is that each customer is different. Most customers want some form of customisation. Most customers want some form of hybrid cloud, a private part for core apps, as well as access to the open Internet to, for instance, exchange views and information with end customers via Twitter or for crowd sourcing with suppliers. Similarly, most customers want a mix of fixed and virtual assets and a blend of self-service and managed service solutions as the chart indicates.

I have recently published a report on enterprise mobility in India. Improving mobility infrastructure, including networks and devices, and business and workforce demand are fueling the growth of mobility within organizations. Mobility is being used not only to connect with customers, but also to connect with suppliers, partners, and employees. A few key takeaways from the report are that:

Interest in advanced mobile-enabled applications is increasing. There is a great impetus among enterprises in India to move beyond only mobile-enabling basic applications such as email, IM, contacts, and calendar. Twenty percent of enterprises plan to mobile-enable advanced applications like location-based services in the coming 12 to 24 months, while 37% of enterprises want to mobile-enable customer relationship management.

Mobility is among the top enterprise priorities for 2012 and investment is set to rise. For business decision-makers at enterprises and SMBs in India, provisioning mobility is one of the top three priorities in 2012. As a result, investment in all aspects of mobility — such as mobile devices, applications, middleware, and services — will increase.

The workforce wants employers to support mobility at work. The consumerization of smart mobility devices like smartphones and tablets is beginning to have an impact on the enterprise front. More than 60% of employees want to use smartphones at work.